What is the lowest blood glucose level you've ever had?

(Alex K Chen) #1

I had one of 44 last night. Not sure if this is “too low”

(Bob M) #2

I had an official test (blood draw at a facility) of 62 after 4.5 days fasting. But I’ve heard of others with much lower glucose values, even lower than yours. And they were fine.

(Michael) #3

Overnight on a 7 day fast my glucose went below 36, not sure how long because the monitor did not register values lower than 36, but simply noted as LOW. If I was not fat adapted it might have been a problem. As I was fat adapted, I felt fine and never showed any signs of a problem.

(Ohio ) #4

55 on a 5 day fast.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #5

If you are in ketosis, your serum glucose can drop quite low, because ketones will take up the slack. In an experiment done in the 1960’s, George Cahill and his team took some research subjects who were in fasting ketosis and, using a hyperinsulinaemic euglycaemic clamp, drove their serum glucose down to levels that are normally associated with coma and death. The subjects were fine—Dr. Phinney likes to joke that it was the researchers who were sweating and having palpitations. It was a damn-fool unethical thing to do, but at least we know that the brain is fine without glucose so long as ketones are abundant.

I suppose that if serum glucose got below a certain level, red blood corpuscles might start to starve to death (since they are unable to metabolise ketones or fatty acids), but such a situation will never arrive in the normal course of things, only when scientists decide to push the limits. And I’m not sure Cahill’s team could have pushed things that far, even if they’d wanted to. And of course, no sane IRB would permit such an experiment these days.